Michael Jackson died on the 25th of June, and fourteen days later he’s still the lead story on CNN. That's two solid weeks of media coverage for a non-event. Being dead isn’t news; rising from the dead is headline-making stuff. Near as I can tell, that has yet to happen to Michael Jackson.
I was never a big fan, but props to him for breaking the color barrier on MTV. For better or worse, he did pave the way for a lot of artists and did help to create the pop culture music scene we have today. The world will never really know if he was truly a pedophile or simply a naïve man guilty of epically bad judgment. When the bullshit media coverage ends, he’ll be remembered mostly for selling records (or CDs or downloads). To quote Tom Petty, “We could move catalog if he’d only die quicker”.
My rant isn’t really about Michael Jackson; instead, it’s about the “softballing” of news coverage on television, in print and on the radio. Why is it necessary to watch BBC to get halfway decent coverage of events in America? When did the domestic media companies decide that Americans preferred “infotainment” instead of news? Have we become so catatonic that we can no longer distinguish between the two?
The sad truth is that news doesn’t bring in ratings. Soundbites, preferably those that are light, fluffy and easily digestible increase viewership. “Today at six, the epic struggle of a man allergic to cats to keep his family pet store open…”.
On the other extreme, we have the alarmist media. If we were to believe half the shit they report on, we’d all be breathing through respirators, drinking self-purified water in our underground bunkers. “Don’t miss our special expose report on toxic terrors – can fabric softeners cause sudden heart failure?”
There are plenty of things to be paranoid about these days, none of which are being reported on in depth. I’ll skip flogging the dead horse of the economy in this posting, but why isn’t the media focused on the economic crisis at home? Every single month produces higher unemployment and less opportunity for the unemployed. Shouldn’t somebody be providing detailed reporting on this? Shouldn’t someone be demanding answers from the administration (other than accepting the current stimulus bill needs more time to work)? Where is the Woodward and Bernstein for this generation? Hell, where is our Walter Cronkite? Where is our Hunter S. Thompson?
I really don’t care about Michael Jackson, Steve McNair, a town being renamed to Kiaville or the potential of Chrome’s success as an operating system. I care about the American troops who continue to die needlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan. I care about the death of the middle class and the impending implosion of American society. I care about the families left destitute, because our government can’t find a way to stem the tide of job losses and doesn’t know what to do with the growing population of homeless.
I care about finding the truth and reporting on it. Hopefully, I’m not the only one.
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